Parmenides

First published Fri Feb 8, 2008; substantive revision Tue Aug 2, 2016

Parmenides of Elea, active in the earlier part of the 5th c. BCE,
authored a difficult metaphysical poem that has earned him a
reputation as early Greek philosophy’s most profound and challenging
thinker. His philosophical stance has typically been understood as at
once extremely paradoxical and yet crucial for the broader development
of Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics. He has been seen as a
metaphysical monist (of one stripe or another) who so challenged the
naïve cosmological theories of his predecessors that his major
successors among the Presocratics were all driven to develop more
sophisticated physical theories in response to his arguments. The
difficulties involved in the interpretation of his poem have resulted
in disagreement about many fundamental questions concerning his
philosophical views, such as: whether he actually was a monist and, if
so, what kind of monist he was; whether his system reflects a critical
attitude toward earlier thinkers such as the Milesians, Pythagoreans,
and Heraclitus, or whether he was motivated simply by more strictly
logical concerns, such as the paradox of negative existentials that
Bertrand Russell detected at the heart of his thought; whether he
considered the world of our everyday awareness, with its vast
population of entities changing and affecting one another in all
manner of ways, to be simply an illusion, and thus whether the lengthy
cosmological portion of his poem represented a genuine attempt to
understand this world at all. This entry aims to provide an overview
of Parmenides’ work and of some of the major interpretive approaches
advanced over the past few decades. It concludes by suggesting that
understanding his thought and his place in the development of early
Greek philosophy requires taking due account of the fundamental modal
distinctions that he was the first to articulate and explore with any
precision.

The dramatic occasion of Plato’s dialogue, Parmenides, is a
fictionalized visit to Athens by the eminent Parmenides and his
younger associate, Zeno, to attend the festival of the Great
Panathenaea. Plato describes Parmenides as about sixty-five years old
and Socrates, with whom he converses in the first part of the
dialogue, as “quite young then,” which is normally taken
to mean about twenty. Given that Socrates was a little past seventy
when executed by the Athenians in 399 BCE, one can infer from this
description that Parmenides was born about 515 BCE. He would thus
appear to have been active during the early to mid-fifth century BCE.
Speusippus, Plato’s successor as head of the Academy, is said to have
reported in his On Philosophers that Parmenides established
the laws for the citizens of his native Elea, one of the Greek
colonies along southern Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast (Speus. fr. 3
Tarán ap. D.L. 9.23; cf. Plu. Col. 1126A),
though Elea was founded some 30 years before Parmenides’ birth. The
ancient historiographic tradition naturally associates Parmenides with
thinkers such as Xenophanes and the Pythagoreans active in Magna
Graecia, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy, whom he may
well have encountered. A 1st c. CE portrait head of Parmenides was
discovered at Castellamare della Bruca (ancient Elea) in the 1960s
with an inscription—“Parmeneides, son of Pyres,
Ouliadês, Natural Philosopher”—that
associates him with a cult of Apollo Oulios or Apollo the Healer.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Parmenides composed only a single work
(D.L. 1.16). This was a metaphysical and cosmological poem in the
traditional epic medium of hexameter verse. The title “On
Nature” under which it was transmitted is probably not
authentic. The poem originally extended to perhaps eight hundred
verses, roughly one hundred and sixty of which have survived as
“fragments” that vary in length from a single word (fr.
15a: “water-rooted,” describing the earth) to the
sixty-two verses of fragment 8. That any portion of his poem survives
is due entirely to the fact that later ancient authors, beginning with
Plato, for one reason or another felt the need to quote some portion
of it in the course of their own writings. Sextus Empiricus quotes
thirty of the thirty-two verses of fragment 1 (the opening Proem of
the poem), though apparently from some sort of Hellenistic digest
rather than from an actual manuscript copy, for his quotation of fr.
1.1–30 continues uninterruptedly with five and a half verses
from fragments 7 and 8. The Alexandrian Neoplatonist Simplicius (6th
c. CE) appears to have possessed a good copy of the work, from which
he quoted extensively in his commentaries on Aristotle’s
Physics and De Caelo. He introduces his lengthy
quotation of fr. 8.1–52 as follows: “Even if one might
think it pedantic, I would gladly transcribe in this commentary the
verses of Parmenides on the one being, which aren’t numerous, both as
evidence for what I have said and because of the scarcity of
Parmenides’ treatise.” Thanks to Simplicius’ lengthy
transcription, we appear to have the entire Parmenides’ major metaphysical
argument demonstrating the attributes of “What Is” (to
eon) or “true reality” (alêtheia).

We are much less well informed about the cosmology Parmenides
expounded in the latter part of the poem and so must supplement the
primary evidence of the fragments with testimonia, that is,
with various reports or paraphrases of his theories that we also find
in later authors. (A number of these testimonia are collected
among the fifty-four “A-Fragmente” in the Parmenides
section of Diels and Kranz’s Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.
A more comprehensive collection of testimonia, with English
translations, is to be found in Coxon 2009, 99–267.) As always
when dealing with an ancient philosopher whose work has not survived
entire, one must take into account how the philosophical and other
concerns of later authors thanks to whom we know what we do of
Parmenides’ original poem are likely to have shaped the transmission
of the extant fragments and testimonia. Certainly the partial
and imperfect preservation of his poem is one factor that complicates
understanding of his thought.

Parmenides’ poem began with a proem describing a journey he
figuratively once made to the abode of a goddess. He described how he
was conveyed on “the far-fabled path of the divinity” (fr.
1.3) in a chariot by a team of mares and how the maiden daughters of
Helios, the sun-god, led the way. These maidens take Parmenides to
whence they themselves have come, to “the halls of Night”
(fr. 1.9), before which stand “the gates of the paths of night
and day” (fr. 1.11). The maidens gently persuade Justice,
guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himself may
pass through to the abode within. Parmenides thus describes how the
goddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:

And the goddess received me kindly, and in her hand she took/ my right
hand, and she spoke and addressed me thus:/ “O young man,
accompanied by immortal charioteers/ and mares who bear you as you
arrive at our abode,/ welcome, since a fate by no means ill sent you
ahead to travel/ this way (for surely it is far from the track of
humans),/ but Right and Justice.” (Fr. 1.22–28a)

Parmenides’ proem is no epistemological allegory of enlightenment but
a topographically specific description of a mystical journey to the
halls of Night. In Hesiod, the “horrible dwelling of dark
Night” (Th. 744) is where the goddesses Night and Day
alternately reside as the other traverses the sky above the Earth.
Both Parmenides’ and Hesiod’s conception of this place have their
precedent in the Babylonian mythology of the sun god’s abode. This
abode also traditionally served as a place of judgment, and this fact
tends to confirm that when Parmenides’ goddess tells him that no ill
fate has sent him ahead to this place (fr. 1.26–27a), she is
indicating that he has miraculously reached the place to which travel
the souls of the dead.

In the proem, then, Parmenides casts himself in the role of an
initiate into the kind of mysteries that were during his day part of
the religious milieu of Magna Graecia. The motif of the initiate is
important, for it informs Parmenides’ portrayal of himself as one
whose encounter with a major divinity has yielded a special knowledge
or wisdom. The divinity in this instance would seem to be Night
herself: Parmenides goes to “the halls of Night” (fr.
1.9), and the goddess who greets him welcomes him to “our
home” (fr. 1.25). The goddess Night serves as counselor to Zeus
in some of the major Orphic cosmologies, including the Derveni
cosmology. In the closely related Orphic Rhapsodies, Night
instructs Zeus on how to preserve the unity produced by his absorption
of all things into himself as he sets about initiating a new
cosmogonic phase. It is thus appropriate that Night should be the
source of Parmenides’ revelation, for Parmenidean metaphysics is very
much concerned with the principle of unity in the cosmos.

Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddess
describes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to
receive:

You must needs learn all things,/ both the unshaken heart of
well-rounded reality/ and the notions of mortals, in which there is no
genuine trustworthiness./ Nonetheless these things too will you learn,
how what they resolved/ had actually to be, all through all pervading.
(Fr. 1.28b-32)

This programmatic announcement already indicates that the goddess’
revelation will come in two major phases. The goddess provides some
further instruction and admonition before commencing the first phase,
the demonstration of the nature of what she here mysteriously calls
“the unshaken heart of well-rounded reality” (fr. 1.29).
She then follows this first phase of her revelation with what in the
originally complete poem was a much longer account of the principles,
origins, and operation of the cosmos and its constituents, from the
heavens and the sun, moon, and stars right down to the earth and its
population of living creatures, including humans themselves. This
second phase, a cosmological account in the traditional Presocratic
mold, is what she here refers to as “the notions of mortals, in
which there is no genuine trustworthiness” (fr. 1.30).

The governing motif of the goddess’ revelation is that of the
“ways of inquiry.” In the all-important fragment 2, she
specifies two such ways:

Come now, I shall tell—and convey home the tale once you have
heard—/just which ways of inquiry alone there are for
understanding:/ the one, that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be,/
is the path of conviction, for it attends upon true reality,/ but the
other, that [it] is not and that [it] must not be,/ this, I tell you,
is a path wholly without report:/ for neither could you apprehend what
is not, for it is not to be accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it.
(Fr. 2)

The second way of inquiry is here set aside virtually as soon as it is
introduced. The goddess goes on to refer back to the first way of
inquiry and then speaks of another way as characteristic of mortal
inquiry:

It is necessary to say and to think that What Is is; for it is to be,/
but nothing it is not. These things I bid you ponder./ For I shall
begin for you from this first way of inquiry,/ then yet again from
that along which mortals who know nothing/ wander two-headed: for
haplessness in their/ breasts directs wandering understanding. They
are borne along/ deaf and blind at once, bedazzled, undiscriminating
hordes,/ who have supposed that it is and is not the same/ and not the
same; but the path of all these turns back on itself. (Fr. 6,
supplementing the lacuna at the end of verse 3 with
arxô and taking s’ earlier in the verse as an
elision of soi, as per Nehamas 1981, 103–5; cf. the
similar proposal at Cordero 1984, ch. 3, expanding parts of Cordero
1979.)

Here the goddess again articulates the division of her revelation into
the two major phases first announced at the end of fragment 1. Compare
her subsequent pronouncement at the point of transition from the first
phase’s account of reality to the second phase’s cosmology: “At
this point I cease for you the trustworthy account and meditation/
regarding true reality; from this point on mortal notions/ learn,
listening to the deceptive order of my verses” (fr.
8.50–2).

Clearly, the goddess’ account of “true reality” proceeds
along the first way of inquiry introduced in fragment 2. Some have
thought the cosmology proceeds along the second way of inquiry
introduced at fr. 2.5, on the ground that the two ways introduced in
fragment 2 appear to be presented as the only conceivable ways of
inquiry. However, the way presented in fragment 6, as that along which
wanders the thought of mortals “who have supposed that it is and
is not the same and not the same” (fr. 6.7–8a), involves
an intermingling of being and not-being altogether different from what
one sees in the way of inquiry earlier specified as “that [it]
is not and that [it] must not be” (fr. 2.5). Fragment 6 thus
appears to be introducing a third and different way, one not to be
identified with fragment 2’s second way, which has already been set
aside. The same mixture of being and non-being likewise features in
the goddess’ warning to Parmenides in fragment 7 not to allow his
thought to proceed along the way typical of mortal inquiries:
“…for this may never be made manageable, that things that
are not are./ But you from this way of inquiry restrain your
understanding,/ and do not let habit born of much experience force you
along this way,/ to employ aimless sight and echoing hearing/ and
tongue. But judge by reason the strife-filled critique/ I have
delivered” (fr. 7). Some have thought that here the goddess’s
last directive signals that some argument, with identifiable premises
and conclusion, has been presented in the preceding verses. She in
fact appears to be indicating that her harsh criticism of the
inapprehension of ordinary humans, resulting from their exclusive
reliance on the senses, has been designed to keep Parmenides firmly
planted on the first way of inquiry.

The goddess begins her account of “true reality,” or what
is to be discovered along this first path, as follows: “As yet a
single tale of a way/ remains, that it is; and along this path markers
are there/ very many, that What Is is ungenerated and deathless,/
whole and uniform, and still and perfect” (fr. 8.1–4).
What Is (to eon) has by this point become a name for what
Parmenides will form a fuller conception of by following the goddess’
directions. These now include the programmatic description here in fr.
8.3–4 of the attributes What Is will be shown to have in the
ensuing arguments. Thanks primarily to Simplicius’ transcription, we
still possess in its entirety the portion of Parmenides’ poem
comprising the goddess’s revelation of the nature of “true
reality.” This account constitutes one of the philosophical
tradition’s earliest, most extensive, and most important stretches of
metaphysical reasoning.

The arguments here proceed methodically in accordance with the program
announced at fr. 8.3–4. The goddess begins by arguing, in fr.
8.5–21, that What Is must be “ungenerated and
deathless”:

but not ever was it, nor yet will it be, since it is now together
entire,/ single, continuous; for what birth will you seek of it?/ How,
whence increased? From not being I shall not allow/ you to say or to
think: for not to be said and not to be thought/ is it that it is not.
And indeed what need could have aroused it/ later rather than before,
beginning from nothing, to grow?/ Thus it must either be altogether or
not at all./ Nor ever from not being will the force of conviction
allow/ something to come to be beyond it: on account of this neither
to be born/ nor to die has Justice allowed it, having loosed its
bonds,/ but she holds it fast. And the decision about these matter
lies in this:/ it is or it is not; but it has in fact been decided,
just as is necessary,/ to leave the one unthought and nameless (for no
true/ way is it), and <it has been decided> that the one that it
is indeed is genuine./ And how could What Is be hereafter? And how
might it have been?/ For if it was, it is not, nor if ever it is going
to be:/ thus generation is extinguished and destruction unheard of.

Fr. 8.5–6a, at the outset here, have often been taken as a
declaration that What Is has some type of timeless existence. Given,
however, that this verse and a half opens a chain of continuous
argumentation, claiming that What Is does not come to be or pass away,
these words are probably better understood as a declaration of What
Is’s uninterrupted existence.

Continuing on, in fr. 8.22–5 the goddess presents a much briefer
argument for What Is’s being “whole and uniform”:
“Nor is it divided, since it is all alike;/ and it is not any
more there, which would keep it from holding together,/ nor any worse,
but it is all replete with What Is./ Therefore it is all continuous:
for What Is draws to What Is.” Then, at fr. 8.26–33, she
argues that it is “still” or motionless:

And unmoved within the limits of great bonds/ it is unbeginning
unending, since generation and destruction/ have wandered quite far
away, and genuine conviction has expelled them./ And remaining the
same, in the same place, and on its own it rests,/ and thus steadfast
right there it remains; for powerful Necessity/ holds it in the bonds
of a limit, which encloses it all around,/ wherefore it is right that
What Is be not unfulfilled; for it is not lacking: if it were, it
would lack everything.

Finally, at fr. 8.42–9 (which Ebert 1989 has shown originally
followed immediately after fr. 8.33, verses 34–41 having
suffered transposition from their original position following verse
52), the goddess concludes by arguing that What Is must be
“perfect,” before transitioning to the second phase of her
revelation:

But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected/ from every side,
like the bulk of a well-rounded globe,/ from the middle equal every
way: for that it be neither any greater/ nor any smaller in this place
or in that is necessary;/ for neither is there non-being, which would
stop it reaching/ to its like, nor is What Is such that it might be
more than What Is/ here and less there. Since it is all inviolate,/
for it is equal to itself from every side, it extends uniformly in
limits.

We have decidedly less complete evidence for the revelation’s second
phase, Parmenides’ cosmology. The direct evidence provided by the last
lines of fragment 8 (50–64) and by the other fragments plausibly
assigned to this portion of the poem (frs. 9 through 19) originally
accounted for perhaps only ten percent of the cosmology’s original
length. Since a number of these fragments are programmatic, we still
have a good idea of some of the major subjects it treated. From the
end of fragments 8 and fragments 9 through 15a we know that these
included accounts of the cosmos’ two basic principles, light and
night, and then of the origin, nature, and behavior of the heavens and
their inhabitants, including the stars, sun, moon, the Milky Way, and
the earth itself. Witness the programmatic remarks of fragments 10 and
11:

You will know the aether’s nature, and in the aether all the/ signs,
and the unseen works of the pure torch/ of the brilliant sun, and from
whence they came to be,/ and you will learn the wandering works of the
round-eyed moon/ and its nature, and you will know too the surrounding
heaven,/ both whence it grew and how Necessity directing it bound it/
to furnish the limits of the stars. (Fr. 10)

…how the earth and sun and moon/ and the shared aether and the
heavenly milk and Olympos/ outermost and the hot might of the stars
began/ to come to be. (Fr. 11)

A few fragments, including one known only via Latin translation, show
that Parmenides also dealt with the physiology of reproduction (frs.
17–18) and with human thought (fr. 16). Fortunately, the sketchy
picture of the cosmology furnished by the fragments is significantly
improved by the testimonia. The impression given by the
fragments of the range of subjects is confirmed by both Simplicius,
who comments after quoting fr. 11 that Parmenides’ account of the
genesis of things extended down to the parts of animals (Simp. in
Cael. 559.26–7), and likewise by Plutarch’s judgment that
Parmenides’ cosmology has so much to say about the earth, heaven, sun,
moon, and stars, right down to the genesis of human beings, that it
omits none of the major subjects typically treated by ancient natural
philosophers (Plu. Col. 1114B-C). A particularly important
testimonium in the doxographer Aëtius paraphrases,
explicates, and supplements fr. 12 in ways that give us a better
picture of the structure of Parmenides’ cosmos (Aët. 2.7.1 =
28A37a Diels-Kranz). Likewise, Theophrastus’ comments on fragment 16
at De Sensibus 1–4 appear to provide more information
about Parmenides’ views on cognition. The ancient testimonia
tend to confirm that Parmenides sought to explain an incredibly wide
range of natural phenomena, including especially the origins and
specific behaviors of both the heavenly bodies and the terrestrial
population. One fundamental problem for developing a coherent view of
Parmenides’ philosophical achievement has been how to understand the
relation between the two major phases of the goddess’ revelation.

While Parmenides is generally recognized as having played a major role
in the development of ancient Greek natural philosophy and
metaphysics, fundamental disagreement persists about the upshot of his
philosophy and thus about the precise nature of his influence.
Sections 3.1 through 3.3 of what follows describe in brief outline the
types of interpretation that have played the most prominent roles in
the development of broader narratives for the history of early Greek
philosophy. These sections do not purport to present a comprehensive
taxonomy of modern interpretations, nor do they make any attempt to
reference all the representatives and variants of the principal types
of interpretation here described. They are not meant to be a history
of modern Parmenides interpretation, as worthy and fascinating a topic
as that is. Since some advocates of the interpretations outlined in
sections 3.1 to 3.3 have claimed to find ancient authority for their
views via selective appeal to certain facets of the ancient Parmenides
reception, it will also be worthwhile indicating what was in fact the
prevailing view of Parmenides in antiquity. After doing so in section
3.4, the final section of this article will outline a type of
interpretation that takes the prevailing ancient view more seriously
while responding to at least one major problem it encounters in the
fragments.

If one wishes to adjudicate among the various types of interpretation,
one may start by recognizing some of the requirements upon a
successful interpretation, or an interpretation offering a
historically plausible account of Parmenides’ thought in its place and
time. A successful interpretation must take account of advances in the
understanding of the text and transmission of the fragments of
Parmenides’ poem, such as Theodor Ebert’s identification of a
transposition in fr. 8 (Ebert 1989) and the results of Leonardo
Tarán’s reexamination of the manuscripts of Simplicius’s commentary
on Aristotle’s Physics (Tarán 1987). A successful
interpretation should attend to the fr. 1 proem’s indications of the
poem’s cultural context. It should attend to the poem’s epistemology
as well as to its logical and metaphysical dimensions. Perhaps most
importantly, it should take full and proper account of Parmenides’
cosmology (and not try to explain it away or else simply ignore it).
Attention in recent years to some of the most innovative features of
the cosmology have confirmed what should have been evident in any
case, namely, that the cosmology that originally comprised the greater
part of his poem is Parmenides’ own explanation of the world’s origins
and operation (see especially Mourelatos 2013, Graham 2013, and
Mansfeld 2015). A successful interpretation must explain the relation
between the two major phases of the goddess’s revelation so that the
existence of what is described in one is compatible with the existence
of what is described in the other. To this end, it should avoid
attributing to Parmenides views that are patently anachronistic or,
worse, views that cannot be coherently asserted or maintained. A
successful interpretation also needs to attend carefully to the
structure of Parmenides’ argumentation in the path of conviction and
to follow it through to the end without lapsing into understanding his
claims that what is is "ungenerated and deathless,/ whole and uniform,
and still and perfect" (fr. 8.3-4) as mere metaphors.

A good many interpreters have taken the poem’s first major phase as an
argument for strict monism, or the paradoxical view that there exists
exactly one thing, and for this lone entity’s being totally unchanging
and undifferentiated. On this view, Parmenides considers the world of
our ordinary experience non-existent and our normal beliefs in the
existence of change, plurality, and even, it seems, our own selves to
be entirely deceptive. Although less common than it once was, this
type of view still has its adherents and is probably familiar to many
who have only a superficial acquaintance with Parmenides.

The strict monist interpretation is influentially represented in the
first two volumes of W. K. C. Guthrie’s A History of Greek
Philosophy, where it is accorded a critical role in the
development of early Greek natural philosophy from the purported
material monism of the early Milesians to the pluralist physical
theories of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the early atomists, Leucippus
and Democritus. On Guthrie’s strict monist reading, Parmenides’
deduction of the nature of reality led him to conclude “that
reality [is], and must be, a unity in the strictest sense and that any
change in it [is] impossible” and therefore that “the
world as perceived by the senses is unreal” (Guthrie 1965,
4–5). Finding reason and sensation to yield wildly contradictory
views of reality, Parmenides presumed reason must be preferred and
sensory evidence thereby rejected as altogether deceptive. His strict
monism, on Guthrie’s view, took particular aim at the monistic
material principles of Milesian cosmology:

[Parmenides] argues with devastating precision that once one has said
that something is, one is debarred from saying that it
was or will be, of attributing to it an origin or a
dissolution in time, or any alteration or motion whatsoever. But this
was just what the Milesians had done. They supposed that the world had
not always existed in its present cosmic state. They derived it from
one substance, which they asserted to have changed or moved in various
ways—becoming hotter or colder, drier or wetter, rarer or
denser—in order to produce the present world-order. (Guthrie
1965, 15-16)

A particular focus of Parmenides’ criticism, on this view, was
Anaximander’s idea that the opposites are initially latent within the
originative principle he called “the Boundless” (to
apeiron) prior to being separated out from it: if these opposite
characteristics existed prior to being separated out, then the
Boundless was not a true unity, but if they did not exist prior to
being separated out, then how could they possibly come into existence?
It is thus illegitimate to suppose that everything came into being out
of one thing (Guthrie 1962, 86–7). In addition to thus
criticizing the theoretical viability of the monistic material
principles of the early Milesian cosmologists, Parmenides also is
supposed to have criticized the Milesian union of the material and
moving cause in their principles by arguing that motion and change are
impossible and inadmissible conceptions (Guthrie 1965, 5–6,
52).

As we have seen, Parmenides’ insistence on the point that whatever is,
is, and cannot ever not be leads him to be harshly critical of the
ordinary run of mortals who rely on their senses in supposing that
things are generated and undergo all manner of changes. Parmenides
directs us to judge reality by reason and not to trust the senses.
Reason, as deployed in the intricate, multi-staged deduction of
fragment 8, reveals what attributes whatever is must possess: whatever
is must be ungenerated and imperishable; one, continuous and
indivisible; and motionless and altogether unchanging, such that past
and future are meaningless for it. This is “all that can be said
about what truly exists,” and reality is thus revealed as
“something utterly different from the world in which each one of
us supposes himself to live,” a world which is nothing but a
“deceitful show” (Guthrie 1965, 51). Parmenides
nonetheless proceeded in the second part of his poem to present an
elaborate cosmology along traditional lines, thus presenting readers
with the following crux: “Why should Parmenides take the trouble
to narrate a detailed cosmogony when he has already proved that
opposites cannot exist and there can be no cosmogony because plurality
and change are inadmissible conceptions?” (Guthrie 1965, 5).
Guthrie suggests that Parmenides is “doing his best for the
sensible world…by giving as coherent an account of it as he
can,” on the practical ground that our senses continue to
deceive us about its existence: “His account of appearances will
excel those of others. To ask ‘But if it is unreal, what is the
point of trying to give an account of it at all?’ is to put a
question that is not likely to have occurred to him” (Guthrie
1965, 5 and 52).

One problem with Guthrie’s view of Parmenides is that the supposition
that Parmenides’ strict monism was developed as a critical
reductio of Milesian material monism sits uncomfortably with
the notion that he actually embraced this wildly counter-intuitive
metaphysical position. There is the same type of tension in the
outmoded proposals that Parmenides was targeting certain supposedly
Pythagorean doctrines (a view developed in Raven 1948 and ensconced in
Kirk and Raven 1957). Even as Guthrie was writing the first two
volumes of his History, a shift was underway toward
understanding Parmenides’ arguments as driven by strictly logical
considerations rather than by any critical agenda with respect to the
theories of his Ionian or Pythagorean predecessors. Here the watershed
event was the publication of G. E. L. Owen’s “Eleatic
Questions” (Owen 1960). Owen found inspiration in Bertrand
Russell for his positive interpretation of Parmenides’ argument in
fragment 2, the essential point of which Owen took to be that what can
be talked or thought about exists.

Russell’s treatment of Parmenides in his A History of Western
Philosophy was conditioned by his own abiding concern with the
problems of analysis posed by negative existential statements. The
essence of Parmenides’ argument, according to Russell, is as
follows:

When you think, you think of something; when you use a name,
it must be the name of something. Therefore both thought and
language require objects outside themselves. And since you can think
of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as another, whatever can
be thought of or spoken of must exist at all times. Consequently there
can be no change, since change consists in things coming into being or
ceasing to be (Russell 1945, 49).

Here the unargued identification of the subject of Parmenides’
discourse as “whatever can be thought of or spoken of”
prefigures Owen’s identification of it as “whatever can be
thought and talked about,” with both proposals deriving from fr.
2.7–8. There follows in Russell’s History an exposition
of the problems involved in speaking meaningfully about (currently)
non-existent subjects, such as George Washington or Hamlet, after
which Russell restates the first stage of Parmenides’ argument as
follows: “if a word can be used significantly it must mean
something, not nothing, and therefore what the word means
must in some sense exist” (Russell 1945, 50). So influential has
Russell’s understanding been, thanks in no small part to Owen’s
careful development of it, that it is not uncommon for the problem of
negative existential statements to be referred to as
“Parmenides’ paradox.”

The arguments of fragment 8, on this view, are then understood as
showing that what can be thought and talked about is, surprisingly,
without variation in time and space, that is, absolutely one and
unchanging. Owen adapted an image from Wittgenstein in characterizing
these arguments, ones which “can only show the vacuousness of
temporal and spatial distinctions by a proof which employs
them,” as “a ladder which must be thrown away when one has
climbed it” (Owen 1960, 67). Owen also vigorously opposed the
assumption that “Parmenides wrote his poem in the broad
tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology,” arguing that
Parmenides claims no measure of truth or reliability for the cosmogony
in the latter part of his poem and that his own arguments in the
“Truth” (i.e., the “Way of Conviction”)
neither derive from this earlier tradition nor depict the cosmos as
spherical in shape (Owen 1960, 48). On Owen’s reading, not so very
differently from Guthrie’s, Parmenides’ cosmology is “no more
than a dialectical device,” that is, “the correct or the
most plausible analysis of those presuppositions on which ordinary
men, and not just theorists, seem to build their picture of the
physical world,” these being “the existence of at least
two irreducibly different things in a constant process of
interaction,” whereas Parmenides’ own arguments have by this
point shown both the plurality and change this picture presupposes to
be unacceptable (Owen 1960, 50 and 54–5).

Owen’s view of Parmenidean metaphysics as driven by primarily logical
concerns and of his cosmology as no more than a dialectical device
would have a deep influence on two of the most important surveys of
Presocratic thought since Guthrie—Jonathan Barnes’s The
Presocratic Philosophers (19791, 19822) and
Kirk, Raven, and Schofield’s The Presocratic Philosophers
(19832). While abandoning the idea that Parmenidean monism
was a specific reaction to the theories of any of his predecessors,
these two works continue to depict his impact on later Presocratic
systems as decisive. On their Owenian line, the story becomes that the
arguments of Parmenides and his Eleatic successors were meant to be
generally destructive of all previous cosmological theorizing, in so
far as they purported to show that the existence of change, time, and
plurality cannot be naively presumed. Parmenides’ arguments in
fragment 8 effectively become, for advocates of this line, a
generalized rather than a specific reductio of early Greek
cosmological theorizing. Barnes, furthermore, responded to an
objection that had been raised against Owen’s identification of
Parmenides’ subject as whatever can be talked and thought
about—namely, that this identification derives from the reason
given at fr. 2.7–8 for rejecting the second path of inquiry,
whereas an audience could not be expected to understand this to be the
goddess’ subject when she introduces the first two ways of inquiry in
fr. 2.3 and 2.5. Barnes modified Owen’s identification of Parmenides’
subject so that it might be found in the immediate context,
specifically in the implicit object of fr. 2.2’s description of the
paths as “ways of inquiry”; thus, according to Barnes, the
first path “says that whatever we inquire into exists,
and cannot not exist” (Barnes 1982, 163). Barnes’s modified
Owenian line has since been endorsed by prominent interpreters
(including Schofield in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983, 245; cf.
Brown 1994, 217). Barnes also advanced the more heterodox proposal
that Parmenides was not necessarily a monist at all, arguing that the
fragments are compatible with the existence of a plurality of
“Parmenidean Beings” (Barnes 1979, cf. Untersteiner 1955).
While this proposal has had fewer adherents among other interpreters
favoring the Russell-Owen line, it has been taken up by certain
advocates of the next type of interpretation.

One influential alternative to interpretations of Parmenides as a
strict monist, certainly among scholars working in America, has been
that developed by Alexander Mourelatos in his 1970 monograph, The
Route of Parmenides. (See Mourelatos 1979 for a succinct
presentation of this alternative in response to perceived shortcomings
in Owen’s logical-dialectical reading.) Mourelatos saw Parmenides as
utilizing a specialized, predicative sense of the verb “to
be” in speaking of “what is”, a sense used to reveal
a thing’s nature or essence. This sense of the verb, dubbed by
Mourelatos “the ‘is’ of speculative
predication,” is supposed to feature in statements of the form,
“X is Y,” where the predicate
“belongs essentially to, or is a necessary condition for, the
subject” and thus gives X’s reality, essence, nature,
or true constitution (Mourelatos 1970, 56–60). Alexander Nehamas
would likewise propose that Parmenides employs “is” in the
very strong sense of “is what it is to be,” so that his
concern is with “things which are F in the strong sense
of being what it is to be F” (Nehamas 1981, 107;
although Nehamas cites Owen as well as Mourelatos as an influence,
Owen himself took Parmenides’ use of the verb “to be” in
“what is” as existential [see Owen 1960, 94]). On the
resulting type of interpretation, the first major phase of Parmenides’
poem provides a higher-order account of what the fundamental entities
of any ontology would have to be like: they would have to be
F, for some F, in this specially strong way. As
such, it is not an account of what there is (namely, one thing, the
only one that exists) but, rather, of whatever is in the manner
required to be an ontologically fundamental entity—a thing that
is F, for some F, in an essential way. Thus Nehamas
has more recently written:

the “signposts” along the way of Being which Parmenides
describes in B 8 [may be taken] as adverbs that characterize a
particular and very restrictive way of being. The signposts then tell
us what conditions must be met if a subject is to be something in the
appropriate way, if it is to be really something, and thus be a real
subject. And to be really something, F, is to be
F—B 8 tells us—ungenerably and imperishably,
wholly, only and indivisibly, unchangingly, perfectly and completely.
… Parmenides uses “being” to express a very strong
notion, which Aristotle eventually was to capture with his concept of
“what it is to be.” To say of something that it is
F is to say that F constitutes its nature (Nehamas
2002, 50).

A variant of the meta-principle interpretation, one that also draws
upon Barnes’s suggestion that nothing in the “Truth”
precludes there being a plurality of Parmenidean Beings, has been
developed by Patricia Curd. On her view, Parmenides was not a strict
monist but, rather, a proponent of what she terms “predicational
monism,” which she defines as “the claim that each thing
that is can be only one thing; it can hold only the one predicate that
indicates what it is, and must hold it in a particularly strong way.
To be a genuine entity, a thing must be a predicational unity, with a
single account of what it is; but it need not be the case that there
exists only one such thing. Rather, the thing itself must be a unified
whole. If it is, say, F, it must be all, only, and completely
F. On predicational monism, a numerical plurality of such
one-beings (as we might call them) is possible” (Curd 1998,
66).

Mourelatos, Nehamas, and Curd all take Parmenides to be concerned with
specifying in an abstract way what it is to be the nature or essence
of a thing, rather than simply with specifying what there in fact is,
as he is presumed to be doing on both the logical-dialectical and the
more traditional strict monist readings. Since the meta-principle
reading takes Parmenides’ major argument in fragment 8 to be
programmatic instead of merely paradoxical or destructive, it suggests
a somewhat different narrative structure for the history early Greek
philosophy, one where the so-called “post-Parmenidean
pluralists”—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the early
atomists, Leucippus and Democritus—were not reacting against
Parmenides, but were actually endorsing his requirements that what
really is be ungenerated, imperishable, and absolutely changeless,
when they conceived of the principles of their respective physical
systems in these terms. The meta-principle reading has also seemed to
re-open the possibility that Parmenides was engaged in critical
reflection upon the principles of his predecessors’ physical
systems.

If the first phase of Parmenides’ poem provides a higher-order
description of the features that must belong to any proper physical
principle, then one would naturally expect the ensuing cosmology to
deploy principles that meet Parmenides’ own requirements. The goddess
describes the cosmology, however, as an account of “the beliefs
of mortals, in which there is no genuine conviction” (fr. 1.30,
cf. fr. 8.50–2) and commences this part of her revelation by
describing how mortals have wandered astray by picking out two forms,
light and night, to serve as the basis for an account of the cosmos’
origin and operation (fr. 8.53–9). Advocates of the
meta-principle reading here face a dilemma. On the one hand, they
cannot plausibly maintain that the cosmology is what their overall
interpretation would lead one to expect, namely, Parmenides’ effort at
developing a cosmology in accordance with his own strictures upon what
the principles of such an account must be like. The cosmological
principles light and night do not in fact conform to those strictures.
But then why should Parmenides have bothered to present a
fundamentally flawed or “near-correct” cosmology, founded
upon principles that fail to satisfy the very requirements he himself
has supposedly specified? If one falls back on the position that the
cosmology in the poem is not Parmenides’ own (which remains
implausible given the cosmology’s innovations), then it becomes even
more puzzling why he should have described what the principles of an
adequate cosmology must be like and then failed to try to present
one.

The presence of the cosmology in Parmenides’ poem continues to be
problematic for advocates of the meta-principle interpretation. just
as it is for advocates of the other major types of interpretation
discussed thus far. Guthrie views the cosmology as Parmenides’ best
attempt at giving an account of the sensible world, given that we will
continue to be deceived into thinking it exists despite his arguments
to the contrary. Not only is this an unstable interpretive position,
it imputes confusion to Parmenides rather than acknowledge its own
difficulties. It is hardly more satisfying to be told by Owen that
Parmenides’ cosmology has a purpose that is “wholly
dialectical” (Owen 1960, 54–5; cf. Long 1963 for a more
detailed development of this interpretive line).

Although they repeat the essentials of Owen’s view, Kirk, Raven, and
Schofield finally acknowledge that the presence of the elaborate
cosmology remains problematic for this line of interpretation:
“Why [the cosmology] was included in the poem remains a mystery:
the goddess seeks to save the phenomena so far as is possible, but she
knows and tells us that the project is impossible” (Kirk, Raven,
and Schofield 1983, 262, after echoing Owen’s line on the cosmology’s
dialectical character at 254–6). While the meta–principle
interpretation raises the expectation, which fails to be met, that the
principles of Parmenides’ cosmology will conform to the requirements
he has supposedly specified earlier in the poem, the strict monist and
logical-dialectical interpretations leave even some of their own
advocates wondering why Parmenides devoted the bulk of his poem to an
account of things his own reasoning is supposed to have shown do not
exist.

The idea that Parmenides’ arguments so problematized the phenomenon of
change as to make developing an adequate theoretical account of it the
central preoccupation of subsequent Presocratic natural philosophers
is a commonplace of modern historical narratives. Unfortunately, this
notion has no real ancient authority. Aristotle’s account at
Physics 1.8.191a23–33 of the wrong turn he
claims earlier natural philosophers took in trying to understand the
principles of change has often been thought to legitimate this view,
given the Eleatic-sounding argument it records. But Aristotle mentions
Parmenides nowhere in the passage, and his complaint is in fact
broadly directed against all the early Greek philosophers whose views
he has been surveying previously in the book. He complains that they
naively adopted the view that no fundamental entity or substance comes
to be or perishes, the result being that they are unable to account
for, because they disavow, substantial change, which is the very
phenomenon Aristotle is most interested in explaining. Aristotle
actually understands Parmenides’ thesis that what is is one (hen
to on) and not subject to generation and change as belonging, not
to natural philosophy, but to first philosophy or metaphysics
(Cael. 3.1.298b14–24; cf. Metaph.
1.5.986b14–18, Ph.
1.2.184a25-b12).

In the complex treatment of Parmenides in Physics
1.2–3, Aristotle introduces Parmenides together with Melissus as
representing the position, within the Gorgianic doxographical schema
structuring his own examination of earlier
archê-theories, that there is a single and unchanging
archê or principle (Ph.
1.2.184b15–16). Aristotle recognizes, however, that
this grouping obscures very real differences between the two thinkers’
views. According to Aristotle, Melissus held that everything is a
single, i.e. continuous or indivisible, and unlimited quantity (or
extension). Parmenides, on Aristotle’s reconstruction, recognized only
a use of “being” indicating what something is in respect
of its substance or essence; he accordingly supposed that everything
that is is substance, and he supposed everything to be one in the
sense that the account of the essence of everything is identical.
Furthermore, on Aristotle’s view of Parmenides, whatever might
differentiate what is cannot do so with respect to its essence but
only accidentally. But no accident of what just is can belong to its
essence, and since Parmenides admits only a use of “being”
indicating what something is in respect of its substance or essence,
no differentiating accident of what is can be said to be. Such is the
thrust of Aristotle’s reconstruction of Parmenides’ reasoning at
Physics 1.3.186a34-b4 and, likewise, of
his summary allusion to this passage at Metaphysics
1.5.986b28–31.

The only point where Aristotle’s representation of Parmenides in
Metaphysics 1.5 appears to differ from the major treatment in
Physics 1.2–3 is in following up this summary with the
qualification that, being compelled to go with the phenomena, and
supposing that what is is one with respect to the account (sc. of its
essence) but plural with respect to perception, he posited a duality
of principles as the basis for his account of the phenomena
(986b27–34, reading to on hen men at
986b31, as per Alexander of Aphrodisias’s paraphrase). This
is only a superficial difference, given how at Physics
1.5.188a19–22 Aristotle points to the Parmenidean
duality of principles to support his thesis that all his predecessors
had made the opposites principles, including those who maintained that
everything is one and unchanging. Nonetheless, the representation of
Parmenides’ position in Metaphysics 1.5, according to which
what is is one with respect to the account of its essence but plural
with respect to perception, is more indulgent than the reconstruction
of Parmenides’ reasoning in Physics 1.3 in that it allows for
a differentiated aspect of what is. By allowing that what is may be
differentiated with respect to its phenomenal qualities, Aristotle
seems to have recognized at some level the mistake in assuming that
Parmenides’ failure to distinguish explicitly among the senses of
“being” entails that he could only have employed the term
in one sense.

Despite the assimilation of Melissus and Parmenides under the rubric
inherited from Gorgias, Aristotle recognized that grouping the two
figures together under this convenient label obscured fundamental
differences in their positions. The fact is that “monism”
does not denote a unique metaphysical position but a family of
positions. Among its species are strict monism or the position that
just one thing exists. This is the position Melissus advocated, one
which no serious metaphysician should want to adopt. More familiar
species include both numerical and generic substance monism, according
to which, respectively, there is a single substance or a single kind
of substance. Aristotle seems ultimately to have inclined toward
attributing this first type of “generous” monism to
Parmenides. In viewing Parmenides as a generous monist, whose position
allowed for the existence of other entities, rather than as a
“strict” monist holding that only one thing exists,
Aristotle is in accord with the majority view of Parmenides in
antiquity.

That some in antiquity viewed Parmenides as a strict monist is evident
from Plutarch’s report of the Epicurean Colotes’ treatment of
Parmenides in his treatise, That One Cannot Live According to the
Doctrines of Other Philosophers. Colotes’ main claim appears to
have been that Parmenides prevents us from living by maintaining that
“the universe is one” (hen to pan), a tag which
Colotes apparently took to mean that Parmenides denied the existence
of fire and water and, indeed, “the inhabited cities in Europe
and Asia”; he may also have claimed that if one accepts
Parmenides’ thesis, there will be nothing to prevent one from walking
off a precipice, since on his view there are no such things (Plut.
Col. 1114B). In short, as Plutarch reports, Colotes said that
“Parmenides abolishes everything by hypothesizing that being is
one” (1114D). Plutarch himself, however, takes strong issue with
Colotes’ view, charging him with imputing to Parmenides
“disgraceful sophisms” (1113F) and with deliberately
misconstruing his position (1114D). Plutarch explains that Parmenides
was in fact the first to distinguish between the mutable objects of
sensation and the unchanging character of the intelligible:
“Parmenides…abolishes neither nature. Instead, assigning
to each what is appropriate, he places the intelligible in the class
of what is one and being—calling it ‘being’ in so far as it is
eternal and imperishable, and ‘one’ because of its likeness unto
itself and its not admitting differentiation—while he locates
the perceptible among what is disordered and changing” (1114D).
Plutarch insists that Parmenides’ distinction between what really is
and things which are what they are at one time, or in one context, but
not another should not be misconstrued as an abolition of the latter
class of entities: “how could he have let perception and
doxa remain without leaving what is apprehended by perception
and doxa?” (1114E-F). Plutarch’s discussion of
Parmenides in Against Colotes is particularly significant in
that it is a substantial discussion of the relation between his
account of Being and his cosmology by an ancient author later than
Aristotle that is not overtly influenced by Aristotle’s own
discussions. In many ways it anticipates the Neoplatonic
interpretation, represented in Simplicius, according to which, broadly
speaking, the two accounts delivered by Parmenides’ goddess describe
two levels of reality, the immutable intelligible realm and the plural
and changing sensible realm (see especially Simplicius’s commentary on
Arist. Cael. 3.1.298b14–24; cf. Procl.
in Ti. 1.345.18–24).

Later Platonists naturally understood Parmenides as thus anticipating
Plato, for Plato himself seems to have adopted a
“Platonist” understanding of this thinker whose influence
on his own philosophy was every bit as profound as that of Socrates
and the Pythagoreans. Aristotle attributes to both Parmenides and
Plato the recognition that knowledge requires as its objects certain
natures or entities not susceptible to change—to Parmenides in
De Caelo 3.1, and to Plato, in remarkably similar language,
in Metaphysics 13.4. The arguments at the end of
Republic 5 that confirm Aristotle’s attribution of this line
of reasoning to Plato are in fact suffused with echoes of Parmenides.
Plato likewise has his fictionalized Parmenides present something very
close to this line of argument in the dialogue bearing his name:
“if someone will not admit that there are general kinds of
entities…and will not specify some form for each individual
thing, he will have nowhere to turn his intellect, since he does not
admit that there is a character for each of the things that are that
is always the same, and in this manner he will destroy the possibility
of discourse altogether” (Prm. 135b5-c2). The Platonic
“natures” Aristotle has in mind are clearly the Forms that
Plato himself is prone to describing in language that echoes the
attributes of Parmenidean Being, most notably at Symposium
210e-211b and Phaedo 78d and 80b. That Plato’s Forms are made
to look like a plurality of Parmenidean Beings might seem to supply
Platonic authority for the meta-principle interpretation. This would
be a rash conclusion, however, for Plato consistently represents
Parmenides as a monist in later dialogues (see, e.g., Prm.
128a8-b1, d1, Tht. 180e2–4, 183e3–4,
Sph. 242d6, 244b6). Determining just what type of monism
Plato means to attribute to Parmenides in these dialogues ultimately
requires plunging into the intricacies of the examination of
Parmenides’ thesis in the latter part of the Parmenides.

Plato’s understanding of Parmenides is best reflected in that
dialogue’s exploration of his thesis in the Second Deduction. There
the One is shown to have a number of properties that reflect those
Parmenides himself attributed to Being in the course of fr. 8: that it
is in itself and the same as itself, that it is at rest, that it is
like itself, that it is in contact with itself, etc. In the Second
Deduction, all these properties prove to belong to the One in virtue
of its own nature and in relation to itself. This deduction also shows
that the One has apparently contrary attributes, though these prove to
belong to it in other aspects, that is, not in virtue of its own
nature and/or not in relation to itself. Plato would have found a
model for his complex account of the various and seemingly conflicting
properties of the One in the two majors phases of Parmenides’ poem if
he, too, subscribed to an “aspectual” interpretation of
Parmenides, according to which the Way of Conviction describes the
cosmos in its intelligible aspect qua being, while allowing
that this description is compatible with an alternate description of
this self-same entity as a world system comprised of differentiated
and changing objects. These two perspectives are notably reflected,
respectively, in the Timaeus’s descriptions of the
intelligible living creature and of the visible cosmos modelled upon
it, both of which are suffused with echoes of Parmenides (see
especially Ti. 30d2, 31a7-b3, 32c5-33a2, 33b4-6, d2-3,
34a3–4, b1–2, and 92c6–9).

That Aristotle also viewed the two major phases of Parmenides’ poem as
dual accounts of the same entity in different aspects is perhaps most
apparent in his characterization of Parmenides, in the course of the
discussion at Metaphysics 1.5.986b27–34, as
having supposed that “what is is one in account but plural with
respect to perception.” Theophrastus likewise seems to have
adopted such a line. Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes him as having
written the following of Parmenides in the first book of his On
the Natural Philosophers:

Coming after this man [sc. Xenophanes], Parmenides of Elea, son of
Pyres, went along both paths. For he both declares that the universe
is eternal and also attempts to explain the generation of the things
that are, though without taking the same view of them both, but
supposing that in accordance with truth the universe is one and
ungenerated and spherical in shape, while in accordance with the view
of the multitude, and with a view to explaining the generation of
things as they appear to us, making the principles two, fire and
earth, the one as matter and the other as cause and agent (Alex.Aphr.
in Metaph. 31.7–16; cf. Simp. in Ph.
25.15–16, D.L. 9.21–2).

Many of Theophrastus’s points here can be traced back to Aristotle,
including the identification of Parmenides’ elemental light and night
as, respectively, fire functioning as an efficient principle and earth
functioning as a material principle (cf. Arist. Ph.
1.5.188a20–2, GC
1.3.318b6–7, 2.3.330b13–14,
Metaph. 1.5.986b28–987a2). The
passage on the whole suggests that, like Plato and Aristotle,
Theophrastus understood Parmenides as furnishing dual accounts of the
universe, first in its intelligible and then in its phenomenal
aspects.

While it would be going too far to claim that Plato, Aristotle,
Theophrastus, and the ancient thinkers who follow their broad view of
Parmenides as a generous monist got Parmenides right on all points,
nonetheless the impulse toward “correcting” (or just
ignoring) the ancient evidence for Presocratic thought has in this
case gone too far. Both Plato and Aristotle understood Parmenides as
perhaps the first to have developed the idea that apprehension of what
is unchanging is of a different order epistemologically than
apprehension of things subject to change. More fundamentally, Plato
and Aristotle both came to understand Parmenides as a type of generous
monist whose conception of what is belongs more to theology or first
philosophy than to natural science. This involved understanding
Parmenides’ cosmology as his own account of the world in so far as it
is subject to change. It also involved understanding the first part of
Parmenides’ poem as metaphysical, in the proper Aristotelian sense of
being concerned with what is not subject to change and enjoys a
non-dependent existence. Most importantly, both Plato and Aristotle
recognized that a distinction between the fundamental modalities or
ways of being was central to Parmenides’ system. None of these major
points is tainted by the kind of obvious anachronism that rightly
makes one suspicious, for instance, about Aristotle’s identification
of Parmenides’ light and night with the elements fire and earth. None
of these broad points, in other words, involves Plato or Aristotle
viewing Parmenides through the distorting lens of their own
concepetual apparatus. The next section will outline the view of
Parmenides’ philosophical achievement that results from attending to
his modal distinctions and to the epistemological distinctions he
builds upon them.

Numerous interpreters have variously resisted the idea that Parmenides
meant to deny the very existence of the world we experience. They have
consequently advocated some more robust status for the cosmological
portion of his poem. (See, e.g., Minar 1949, Woodbury 1958, Chalmers
1960, Clark 1969, Owens 1974, Robinson 1979, de Rijk 1983, and
Finkelberg 1986, 1988, and 1999, and Hussey 1990.) Unfortunately, too
many interpretations of this type deploy the terms
“reality,” “phenomena,” and
“appearance” so ambiguously that it can be difficult to
tell whether they intend to attribute an objective or merely some
subjective existence to the inhabitants of the
“phenomenal” world. More positively, a number of these
interpreters have recognized the important point that the two parts of
the goddess’ revelation are presented as having different epistemic
status. (See also the proposal at Kahn 1969, 710 and n. 13, to
identify Parmenides’ subject in the Way of Conviction as “the
object of knowing, what is or can be known.”) They have
nonetheless failed to take proper account of the modal distinctions
that define Parmenides’ presentation of the ways of inquiry. In this
omission they are not alone, of course, since none of the types of
interpretation reviewed so far recognizes that Parmenides was the
first philosopher rigorously to distinguish what must be, what must
not be, and what is but need not be.

In the crucial fragment 2, the goddess says she will describe for
Parmenides “which ways of inquiry alone there are for
understanding” (fr. 2.2). The common construal of this phrase as
tantamount to the only conceivable ways of inquiry has been
one of the principal spurs for readings according to which only two,
not three, paths feature in the poem, for it is natural to wonder how
the goddess can present fragment 2’s two paths as the only conceivable
paths of inquiry and nonetheless in fragment 6 present still another
path, that along which mortals are said to wander. Two-path
interpretations respond to this apparent difficulty by identifying the
path of mortal inquiry with fragment 2’s second path (though
implausibly so, as noted above, sect. 2.2). Parmenides’ goddess in
fact has good reason to distinguish the two ways of inquiry presented
in fragment 2 from the way subsequently presented in fragment 6. The
two ways of fragment 2, unlike the third way, are marked as ways
“for understanding,” that is, for achieving the kind of
understanding that contrasts with the “wandering
understanding” the goddess later says is characteristic of
mortals. The use of the Greek datival infinitive in the phrase,
“there are for understanding” (eisi noêsai,
fr. 2.2b; cf. Empedocles fr. 3.12 for the identical construction)
distinguishes the two ways introduced in this fragment from the one
subsequently introduced in fragment 6, as ways for
understanding. That the goal is specifically understanding that
does not wander becomes clear when she subsequently presents the
third way as one followed by “mortals who know nothing”
(fr. 6.4), which leads to “wandering understanding”
(plagkton nöon, fr. 6.6). Comparison with fr.
8.34–6a’s retrospective indication that
“understanding” (noêma, to noein),
by which is apparently meant trustworthy thought (cf. fr. 8.50), has
itself been a major goal of the inquiry suggests that a way for
understanding is one along which this goal of attaining trustworthy
understanding might be achieved.

The two ways of inquiry that lead to thought that does not wander are:
“that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be” (fr.
2.3)—i.e., “that [it] is and that [it] cannot not
be”—and “that [it] is not and that [it] must not
be” (fr. 2.5). Each verse appears to demarcate a distinct
modality or way of being. One might find it natural to call these
modalities, respectively, the modality of necessary being and the
modality of necessary non-being or impossibility. Parmenides conceives
of these modalities as ways of being or ways an entity might be rather
than as logical properties. If one respects the organizing metaphor of
the ways of inquiry, one can, even at this stage of the goddess’
revelation, appreciate what it means for “that [it] is and that
[it] cannot not be” to define a way of inquiry. This
specification indicates that what Parmenides is looking for is what is
and cannot not be—or, more simply, what must be. Pursuing this
way of inquiry requires maintaining a constant focus on the modality
of the object of his search as he tries to attain a fuller conception
of what an entity that is and cannot not be, or that must be, must be
like. To remain on this path Parmenides must resolutely reject any
conception of the object of his search that proves incompatible with
its mode of being, as the goddess reminds him at numerous points.

What one looks for along this path of inquiry is what is and cannot
not be, or, more simply, what must be. It is therefore appropriate to
think of the first path as the path of necessary being and of what
lies along it as what is (what it is) necessarily. What is and cannot
not be will be whatever is (what it is) actually throughout the
history of this world. Likewise, what is not and must not be will be
whatever is not (anything) actually at any moment in the world’s
history. There are of course other ways for things to be, but not,
according to Parmenides, other ways for things to be such that
apprehension of them will figure as understanding that does not
wander. The second way is introduced alongside the first because the
modality of necessary non-being or impossibility specified in fr. 2.5
is just as constant and invariable as the modality of necessary being
specified in fr. 2.3. Whatever thought there may be about what lies
along this second way will be unwavering and, as such, will contrast
with the wandering thought typical of mortals. Even if the effort to
think about what lies along the second way ends (as it does) in a
total failure of apprehension, this non-apprehension remains
unwavering. Inquiry along the second way involves, first, keeping in
mind that what one is looking for is not and must not be, and thereby
trying to discover what an entity that is in this way must be like. It
is immediately evident, though, what an entity that is not and must
not be is like: nothing at all. The goddess warns Parmenides not to
set out on the second way because there is no prospect of finding or
forming any conception of what must not be. She thus tells Parmenides
at fr. 2.6 that this is a path where nothing at all can be learned by
inquiry.

Paying proper attention to the modal clauses in the goddess’
specification of the first two ways of inquiry enables us to
understand the last two verses of fragment 2 as making a sound
philosophical point. She says, again, at fr. 2.7–8:
“neither could you apprehend what is not, for it is not to be
accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it.” Here she is warning
Parmenides against proceeding along the second way, and it should be
clear that “what is not” (to mê eon) is the
goddess’ way of referring to what is in the manner specified just two
verses above: “that [it] is not and that [it] must not be”
(fr. 2.5). She declares that Parmenides could neither know nor
indicate “what is not” by way of explaining her assertion
in the preceding verse that the second way is a way wholly without
report. Thus here “what is not” (to mê eon)
serves as shorthand for “what is not and must not be.”
(Given the awkwardness of having to deploy the phrase “what is
not and must not be” whenever referring to what enjoys the
second way’s mode of being, one would expect Parmenides to have
employed such a device even if he had written in prose.) One cannot,
in fact, form any definite conception of what is not and must not be,
and a fortiori one cannot indicate it in any way. (Try to
picture a round square, or to point one out to someone else.)
Parmenides has not fallen prey here to the purportedly paradoxical
character of negative existential statements but makes a perfectly
acceptable point about the inconceivability of what necessarily is
not. Any philosopher with an interest in the relation between
conceivability and possibility should be prepared to recognize in
Parmenides’ assertion that you could neither apprehend nor indicate
what is not (and must not be) one of the earliest instances of a form
of inference—that from inconceivability to
impossibility—that continues to occupy a central position in
metaphysical reasoning.

Before undertaking to guide Parmenides toward a fuller conception of
what is and cannot not be, the goddess properly warns him away from a
third possible path of inquiry in fragments 6 and 7, while at the same
time reminding him of the imperative to think of what is in the manner
specified in fr. 2.3 only as being (what it is). Fragment 6 begins
with the goddess instructing Parmenides that it is necessary to say
and think that “What Is” (to eon) is,
and that he is not to think of it as not being. (Here to eon
functions as a shorthand designation for what is in the way specified
in fr. 2.3, that is, what is and cannot not be, paralleling fr. 2.7’s
use of to mê eon or “what is not” as
shorthand for what is in the way specified in fr. 2.5, that is, what
is not and must not be.) This is her essential directive to Parmenides
regarding how to pursue the first path of inquiry. The goddess also
indicates in this fragment that the second major phase of her
revelation will proceed along the path typically pursued by mortals
whose reliance upon sensation has yielded only wandering
understanding. She provides what amounts to a modal specification of
this path of inquiry when she describes mortals as supposing
“that it is and is not the same/ and not the same” (fr.
6.8–9a). The sense of this difficult clause seems to be that
mortals mistakenly suppose that an object of genuine understanding may
be subject to the variableness implicit in their conception of it as
being and not being the same, and being and not being not the same.
This is not to say that the things upon which ordinary humans have
exclusively focused their attention, because of their reliance upon
sensation, do not exist. It is merely to say that they do not
enjoy the mode of necessary being required of an object of unwandering
understanding. The imagery in fr. 6.4–7 that paints mortals as
wandering blind and helpless portrays them as having failed entirely
to realize that there is something that must be that is available for
them to apprehend if only they could awaken from their stupor. Even
so, the goddess does not say that mortals have no apprehension.
Understanding that wanders is still understanding.

The goddess reveals to Parmenides, however, the possibility of
achieving understanding that does not wander or that is stable and
unchanging, precisely because its object is and cannot not be (what it
is). The third way of inquiry can never lead to this, and thus it is
not presented by the goddess as a path of inquiry for understanding.
It directs the inquirer’s attention to things that are (what they are)
only contingently or temporarily: they are and then again are not, or
they are a certain way and then again are not that way. The problem
with this path is not, as too many interpreters have understood it to
be, that nothing exists to be discovered along this way.
There are innumerably many things that are (and exist) in the manner
specified at fr. 6.8–9a (and fr. 8.40–1). However, since
their being is merely contingent, Parmenides thinks there can be no
stable apprehension of them, no thoughts about them that remain
steadfast and do not wander, and thus no true or reliable conviction.
According to Parmenides, genuine conviction cannot be found by
focusing one’s attention on things that are subject to change. This is
why he has the goddess repeatedly characterize the cosmology in the
second phase of her revelation as deceptive or untrustworthy. The
modal interpretation thus makes it relatively straightforward to
understand the presence of the poem’s cosmology. It is an account of
the principles, origins, and operation of the world’s mutable
population. It is Parmenides’ own account, the best he was able to
provide, and one firmly in the tradition of Presocratic cosmology. At
the same time, however, Parmenides supposed there was more to the
world than all those things that have grown, now are, and will
hereafter end (as he describes them in fragment 19). There is also
what is (what it is) and cannot not be (what it is).

The first major phase of the goddess’ revelation in fragment 8 is, on
the modal interpretation, a meditation on the nature of what must be.
The goddess leads Parmenides to form a conception of what whatever
must be has to be like just in virtue of its modality. Appreciating
that Parmenides is concerned with determining what can be inferred
about the nature or character of What Is simply from its mode of being
enables one to see that he is in fact entitled to the inferences he
draws in the major deductions of fragment 8. Certainly what must be
cannot have come to be, nor can it cease to be. Both possibilities are
incompatible with its mode of being. Likewise, what must be cannot
change in any respect, for this would involve its not being what it
is, which is also incompatible with its mode of being, since what must
be must be what it is. On the assumption, inevitable at the time, that
it is a spatially extended or physical entity, certain other
attributes can also be inferred. What must be must be free from any
internal variation. Such variation would involve its being something
or having a certain character in some place(s) while being something
else or having another character in others, which is incompatible with
the necessity of its (all) being what it is. For much the same reason,
it must be free from variation at its extremity. Since the only solid
that is uniform at its extremity is a sphere, what must be must be
spherical.

It is difficult to see what more Parmenides could have inferred as to
the character of what must be simply on the basis of its modality as a
necessary being. In fact, the attributes of the main program have an
underlying systematic character suggesting they are meant to exhaust
the logical possibilities: What Is both must be (or exist), and it
must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially. For What
Is to be (or exist) across times is for it to be ungenerated and
deathless; and for it to be what it is across times is for it
to be “still” or unchanging. For What Is to be (or exist)
everywhere is for it to be whole. For it to be what it is at
every place internally is for it to be uniform; and to be so
everywhere at its extremity is for it to be “perfect” or
“complete.” Taken together, the attributes shown to belong
to what must be amount to a set of perfections: everlasting existence,
immutability, the internal invariances of wholeness and uniformity,
and the invariance at its extremity of being optimally shaped. What Is
has thus proven to be not only a necessary but, in many ways, a
perfect entity.

On the modal interpretation, Parmenides may be counted a
“generous” monist. While he reasons that there is only one
entity that must be, he also sees that there are manifold entities
that are but need not be (what they are). Parmenides was a
“generous” monist because the existence of what must be
does not preclude the existence of all the things that are but need
not be. There are at least two options for envisaging how this is
supposed to be the case. Some who have understood Parmenides as a
generous monist have adopted a view similar to Aristotle’s. In
Metaphysics 1.5, Aristotle remarks that Parmenides seems to
have had a conception of formal unity (986b18–19),
and he gives a compressed account of the reasoning by which he takes
Parmenides to have arrived at such a conception
(986b27–31). Then, as already noted, he adds the
comment that Parmenides, being compelled to go with the phenomena, and
supposing that what is is one with respect to the account (sc. of
its essence) but plural with respect to perception, posited a
duality of principles as the basis for his account of the phenomena
(986b27–34). Thus, for Aristotle, Parmenides held
that what is is one, in a strong and strict sense, but it is
also many (in and for perception). A number of modern interpreters
have also advocated some form of what amounts to the ancient
“aspectual” view of the relation between the two phases of
the goddess’ revelation. (See Owens 1974 and Finkelberg 1999, who
explicitly position their views as heirs to that at Arist.
Metaph. 1.5.986b27–34.) Parmenides would
certainly have been a generous monist if he envisioned What Is as
consubstantial with the cosmos’s perceptible and mutable population.
But an apparently insurmountable difficulty for this response comes in
the suggestive verses of fr. 4: “but behold things that, while
absent, are steadfastly present to thought:/ for you will not cut off
What Is from holding fast to What Is,/ neither dispersing everywhere
every way in a world-order (kata kosmon)/ nor drawing
together.”

It thus seems preferable to understand What Is as coterminous but not
consubstantial with the perceptible cosmos: it is in exactly the same
place where the perceptible cosmos is, but is a separate and distinct
“substance.” (Note the parallels between fr. 8.30b-31 and
fr. 10.5-7, as well as between fr. 8.24 and fr. 9.3.) On this view,
What Is imperceptibly interpenetrates or runs through all things while
yet maintaining its own identity distinct from theirs. Something like
this seems to be how Anaxagoras envisioned the relation between Mind
and the rest of the world’s things: Mind, he says, “is now where
also all the others are, in that which surrounds many things and in
those which have accreted and in those which have separated out”
(Anaxag. fr. 14). Parmenides’ vision of the relation between What Is
and the developed cosmos, as coterminous but not consubstantial, also
has its analogue in Xenophanes’ conception of the relation between his
one greatest god and the cosmos, as well as in Empedocles’ conception
of the divinity that is the persistent aspect of the cosmos’ perfectly
unified condition, darting throughout the cosmos with its swift
thought. Both appear to be coterminous but not consubstantial with the
cosmos they penetrate.

Although What Is in Parmenides has its nearest analogue in these
divine principles, Parmenides himself never in the extant fragments
calls What Is divine or otherwise suggests that it is a god. Instead,
he develops an exhaustive conception of what what must be has to be
like, by systematically pursuing the fundamental idea that what must
be both must be or exist, and must be what it is, not only temporally
but also spatially. Whatever other attributes it might have that
cannot be understood to belong to it in one of these ways do not enter
into Parmenides’ conception of What Is. Thus it has none of the
features of the religious tradition’s heavenly gods that persist as
attributes of Xenophanes’ greatest god, despite resembling it in other
respects. If Xenophanes can be seen as a founder of rational theology,
then Parmenides’ distinction among the principal modes of being and
his derivation of the attributes that must belong to what must be,
simply as such, qualify him to be seen as the founder of metaphysics
or ontology as a domain of inquiry distinct from theology.

Coxon, A. H., 2009. The Fragments of Parmenides: A critical
text with introduction, translation, the ancient testimonia and a
commentary, revised and expanded edition with new translations by
Richard McKirahan, Las Vegas/Zurich/Athens: Parmenides
Publishing.

–––, 1970. The Route of Parmenides: A Study
of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments, New Haven, CT, and
London: Yale University Press; revised and expanded edition, Las
Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2008.